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According to some Christian outlooks we were made for another world. Perhaps, rather, we were made for this world to recreate, reclaim, redeem, and renew unto God's future aspiration by the power of His Spirit. - R.E. Slater

Secularization theory has been massively falsified. We don't live in an age of secularity. We live in an age of explosive, pervasive religiosity... an age of religious pluralism. - Peter L. Berger

Exploring the edge of life and faith in a post-everything world. - Todd Littleton

I don't need another reason to believe, your love is all around for me to see. – anon

Thou art our need; and in giving us more of thyself thou givest us all. - Khalil Gibran, Prayer XXIII

Be careful what you pretend to be. You become what you pretend to be. - Kurt Vonnegut

Religious beliefs, far from being primary, are often shaped and adjusted by our social goals. - Jim Forest

People, even more than things, need to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone. – anon

Certainly God's love has made fools of us all. - R.E. Slater

An apocalyptic Christian faith doesn't wait for Jesus to come, but for Jesus to become in our midst. - R.E. Slater

Christian belief in God begins with the cross and resurrection of Jesus, not with rational apologetics. - Eberhard Jüngel, Jürgen Moltmann

Our knowledge of God is through the 'I-Thou' encounter, not in finding God at the end of a syllogism or argument. There is a grave danger in any Christian treatment of God as an object. The God of Jesus Christ and Scripture is irreducibly subject and never made as an object, a force, a power, or a principle that can be manipulated. - Emil Brunner

Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh means "I will be that who I have yet to become." - God (Ex 3.14)

Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. - Thomas Merton

The church is God's world-changing social experiment of bringing unlikes and differents to the Eucharist/Communion table to share life with one another as a new kind of family. When this happens we show to the world what love, justice, peace, reconciliation, and life together is designed by God to be. The church is God's show-and-tell for the world to see how God wants us to live as a blended, global, polypluralistic family united with one will, by one Lord, and baptized by one Spirit. – anon

The cross that is planted at the heart of the history of the world cannot be uprooted. - Jacques Ellul

The Unity in whose loving presence the universe unfolds is inside each person as a call to welcome the stranger, protect animals and the earth, respect the dignity of each person, think new thoughts, and help bring about ecological civilizations. - John Cobb & Farhan A. Shah

If you board the wrong train it is of no use running along the corridors of the train in the other direction. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

God's justice is restorative rather than punitive; His discipline is merciful rather than punishing; His power is made perfect in weakness; and His grace is sufficient for all. – anon

Our little [biblical] systems have their day; they have their day and cease to be. They are but broken lights of Thee, and Thou, O God art more than they. - Alfred Lord Tennyson

Sunday, April 3, 2016

An April Fool's Joke - Archaeologists Find Q

The following post was submitted on April Fool's Day as a joke. Hence it is pure fabrication. However, let us allow its composition and then move on to reading the reference section about the theory of the manuscript Q as a way of thinking through what textual criticism might involve when early biblical documents are found.

Enjoy the humor (it was nicely done). But please do not consider this specious "finding" true or real in any way.

The earliest collection of the sayings of Jesus, written down in Hebrew by Jesus’ disciple Matthew, has been found.

These sayings, older than our gospels, now leave us with unprecedented questions: if they disagree with the gospels, which do we follow? Should we add this to the Bible?

Biblical scholars and students of history will be delighted that manuscript fragments of the until-now-speculative Q have been discovered. The papyrus pieces, clearly written in first-century Hebrew, are referred to by the Hebrew letter ק (Qoph). [The first word on the manuscript is קהל (“crowd”) - reading from right to left in the Jewish way of reading].

Unprecedented inter-disciplinary cooperation between Western archaeologists, Jewish and Christian Biblical scholars, and with the assistance of both Israeli and Palestinian authorities, have led today to the announcement that we have the earliest copy of this until-now-conjectural Q.

“The Q source (…from German: Quelle, meaning “source”) is a hypothetical written collection of Jesus’s sayings (logia). Q is (part of) the “common” material found in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke but not in the Gospel of Mark.”

Peer-reviewing completed, the announcement has been embargoed until 1 April, and so, as we are one of the first countries past the date line, this is going to be one of the first places that you will read it.

Location where ק was foundק was a highly unexpected find made last year in Jaffa by student volunteers, the majority of whom were helping to excavate the twelfth-century B.C. Lion Temple area and Persian period buildings. Because there were so many volunteers, some were assigned to go over some excavations from the Roman period.

Prof. Ida Claire has been overseeing the international group of scholars. “This is certainly a once-in-a-lifetime event. Possibly once in a century,” she said. The manuscript consists solely of sayings of Jesus, and there are many similarities toThe Gospel of Thomas which was only discovered last century.

Dr. Richard U. Shure has been translating the document, and he has been able to conjecture some of the missing elements. R.U. Shure has long thought that Eusebius in the fourth century is correct in recounting the second-century Papias, that Saint Matthew collected the sayings of Jesus and wrote them down in Hebrew: “περὶ δὲ τοῦ Ματθαῖου ταῦτ’ εἴρηται· Ματθαῖος μὲν οὖν Ἑβραΐδι διαλέκτῳ τὰ λόγια συνετάξατο, ἡρμήνευσεν δ’ αὐτὰ ὡς ἧν δυνατὸς ἕκαστος”. [“Matthew collected the sayings of Jesus in the Hebrew language, and each one interpreted/translated them as best he could”]. “Here then,” says Dr Shure, “is the oldest copy of what Jesus actually said.”

The find will completely revolutionise New Testament scholarship. Renowned radical theologian, John Dominic Crossan, is expected to make a statement later today when the 1st of April rolls round, lifting the embargo in his timezone. But conservatives won’t have it all their own way. It will take some time for the full text and its possible translations to become available to the non-professional and online. There appear to be references to journeys to India. This may alter dialogue with Buddhism completely, not to mention Hinduism. And there may be further controversial material about marriage, much in the news now days.

Dominican theologian, Father Justin I Dea, sees two theological problems on the horizon. Aware that there are differences between ק and what Jesus says in Matthew and Luke, which teaching should Christians follow? “From the reconstructions I have seen so far,” says Fr Dea, “there are teachings which differ from our Gospels, and there are teachings that our Gospels have omitted. Do we follow what the Church has taught is inspired? Or do we follow what is probably more original?” Secondly, we have never had access to material closer to Jesus than the four Gospels. All other documents date later and are less reliable. “Putting it bluntly – should ק be added to the Bible?”

A copy of the text will be sent to the meeting of the Pan-Orthodox Council in Crete, Greece, in June 2016. Another copy is going to the meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council beginning in a couple of weeks. “A lot will rest, of course, on the Vatican’s response. Calling an ecumenical council would be extremely expensive,” says Mr Bill M. Lader, a philanthropist who has funded much of the research. “But at the end of the day, I am thrilled with the interest in this discovery. It is a memorable day on the calendar!”

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